The Steam Room

Life-changing moments are sometimes big events and sometimes nothing we notice at the time.  They can be a serious medical event or the same old thing that happens every day.  Whether it creeps up on you or smacks you upside the head, everybody experiences things that make them sit up and take notice of life.  We take stock and re-evaluate. We figure out what life we want and grab hold of it. Some people take up knitting or a sport. Romantics turn to reading and writing romance novels.

Please welcome Missy Martine and Jillian Chantal as theytalk about how writing romance helps them combat stress.

 Missy Martine

I write romance because reading romance novels helped me through one of the worst times of my life. Up until 2002, I was a workaholic happily devoting twelve to fourteen hours a day to my new business.  I’d retired from nursing and opened my own medical billing service.  The business was flourishing and so was I.  Everything seemed perfect and then tragedy struck.  My entire life came to ascreeching halt when I suffered a series of small strokes.  Overnight I went from a secure, on top-of-the-world businesswoman to someone who couldn’t communicate and needed help to dress herself.  My life was a nightmare of doctors, physical therapy and no romance.

Up until then I’d not been much of a reader.  There was never time in my busy schedule.  After the strokes I had nothing but time, and reading became an escape for me.  I read my first ménage romance about six months into my recovery and it completely changed my life and gave me hope thatI might have a second chance at love.  It put romance back into my heart, and from there, back into my marriage.  One book led to another and before I knew it, I’d read over two hundred books in one year. When I started writing, it seemed only natural that I’d want to write something that might affect another person the same way.  Today it gives me great pleasure to think that my books might bring a little romance into some lonely person’s life.

www.missymartine.com

Missy Martine's complete bibliography

Jillian Chantal

There are two reasons I write romance. The first one is thatI have a high stress day job. It’s sometimes a real downer and I find that the quest to make a “happily ever after” for my characters operates as a way to pull myself off the ceiling when I have a bad day in the trenches. It takes away the stress and relaxes me. The second reason, and the best part of writing romance, is that I can make the male characters say whatever I want. I work in a male dominated field and I live with a spouse and two sons. It’s a fun thing to be able to write a male character that I can mold. Not that I want a Stepford husband and kids but, man, sometimes, my dialogue is better than what they come out with.  Seriously, I love the romance genre and the Happily Ever After aspect, and the best byproduct of writing romance? Being a part of the community of writers in this genre- they are all awesome and so supportive! 

http://jillianchantal.wordpress.com/

Solo Honeymoon link

So, Readers, what kind of stresses does reading romance help you to overcome? Leave a comment below. At the end of the week, I'll choose one lucky commenter to win their choice of one of my novels, including my upcoming mainstream contemporary romance, Crimes of the Heart.

Check back tomorrow for Magical Journeys Friday, February 11: Melissa Bradley, LauraTolomei, KR Bailey